Waking Hours (46 page)
As he approached, he saw two people. Dani was one of them. The other had his back to Tommy, but Tommy knew who it was.
He was grateful that all the lights were on in the kitchen. It meant that no one inside the kitchen would be able to see out into the yard.
He stepped quietly onto Dani’s back porch and drew his gun. From where he stood, Tommy couldn’t get a clear shot at Amos without Dani being in the line of fire. He wished he’d found time to practice with it, given that he’d never fired it before. He realized, upon closer examination of the weapon, that it also would have been a good idea to put the bullets he’d unloaded when he’d slept on the floor of Dani’s bedroom back in the gun before he left his house.
When he saw Amos raise the poker, he was out of options.
Tommy flipped the switch.
He charged full speed, striking the lock stiles above the midrail with the top of his head, his forearms taking the rest of the blow, the doors splintering inward as glass flew across the kitchen.
Dani screamed.
Amos turned and brought his arm down, cracking the brass fireplace poker against the padded right shoulder of Tommy’s leather motorcycle jacket, his Kevlar absorbing the rest of the blow.
Tommy felt a tongue of fire in his right shoulder but ignored the pain and kept his head low, his powerful legs driving him into Amos as he speared the boy, the top of his skull connecting with Amos’s sternum, a move that would have been illegal on the football field, but Tommy didn’t hear any whistles.
Something cracked.
His momentum drove the chairs aside and tipped the table over. He kept driving with his legs, grabbing Amos by the wrist as Amos tried to slam the cleaver into Tommy’s head. Amos crashed against the stove. Tommy heard the air press out of the boy’s lungs, and then the two of them fell to the floor. He grabbed Amos by the sweatshirt to throw him into the cupboards.
But Amos had a strange look on his face, not quite a smile, as he stopped resisting and went limp.
Tommy let go of the boy, threw him down and moved back, rising from his knees and struggling for solid footing amid the debris.
Dani took a step closer, then stopped when Tommy held up his hand.
Amos opened his mouth, and a stream of blood poured from it. He made a gurgling noise as his eyes turned glassy and began to deaden. He looked up at Dani, then at Tommy, then again at Dani.
Tommy lowered his gaze and noticed a broken shard from the half-inch-thick glass kitchen tabletop piercing Amos’s torso, the point of the glass spear sharp and coated in liquid red as blood pulsed from the wound and flowed across the floor.
Tommy moved to Dani’s side.
“Are you hurt?” he asked her.
She shook her head, then picked something up from the floor.
He saw a syringe in her hand.
He watched as she pulled the sleeve up on Amos’s limp arm and injected him.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“The pain,” she told him.
Dani knelt beside the boy.
“Mir,”
she said softly.
“Mir. Mir.”
As Amos died, Tommy hoped to see an expression of peace on the boy’s face, some kind of final resolution or recognition. Instead, Amos’s eyes opened wide, as if he saw something terrifying.
42
.
Detective Phillip Casey had moved quickly after dispatch put out the code when the officer posted at the end of Dani’s driveway failed to respond to his radio. Dani told Phil as much as she could remember from the night, and he took notes.
She’d been grateful when Tommy handed her her overnight bag, packed with pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, an assortment of skin care and hair products, and a few books to read in case she had trouble sleeping. She declined his offer of the guest room for a second night. He told her, as he drove her to the Peter Keeler Inn, that by tomorrow afternoon the cleanup crew he’d contacted would have her house looking as if nothing had happened.
“Maybe when you feel ready, we can make a trip to IKEA and get you a new kitchen table,” he said.
“How is it that you seem to know exactly what to do and say?” she asked him.
“I’m just making it up,” he told her when they reached her room. “I think I’m going to talk to Carl tomorrow. Irene asked us if we could come in tomorrow morning. You think you’ll feel up to it?”
“Hard to know,” she said.
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Thank you,” she told him. “You’ve been . . . kind of amazing.”
“Have room service bring you some warm milk,” he said. “It’s over.”
The next morning in Irene Scotto’s office, the DA asked Dani and Tommy how they were managing. Dani admitted that she’d been unable to fall asleep the night before.
“If you need to take a week or two to clear your head, do,” Irene told her. “There’s a clinic in Maryland that specializes in treating PTSD in first responders. We learned that after 9/11. Nobody can walk around scooping up body parts and think they’re going to come out of it unchanged. You do what you have to do. I need you.”
Phil and Stuart arrived and then Irene debriefed the case, making sure they had all the evidence in place. They had proof that Amos had altered his school’s security system video files. They found bottles of ammonium nitrate and zinc in his room, as well as traces of GHB and Rohypnol in his dresser drawer. Amos had borrowed a classmate’s computer to send incriminating e-mails to Julie, in which he’d explained the elaborate prank he wanted to play. One of the e-mails talked about how they were going to split the $10,000 and how they were going to spend their shares. Julie was going to save hers for college. The clothes the teenagers had worn the night of the party showed blood and DNA only on their shoes, but none anywhere else, consistent with Dani’s redaction of events. There was no evidence to suggest that Amos had acted in concert with anyone else. Logan was in on the prank but not the murder. Amos had planned and executed both the crime and the cover-up.
And Amos was dead.
Case closed.
“So next,” Irene said, “I’ve got the kids from the party and their lawyers and their families waiting in the conference room down the hall. I asked Stuart to make me a list of any further charges we might file. Aiding and abetting. Obstruction. Thoughts?”
Dani felt the need to speak up. She pointed out to the DA and everyone else that none of the kids had any recollection of what happened the night Julie was killed. She hoped they could leave it that way.
“Amos wanted them to feel haunted,” Dani said. “He wanted them to feel stigmatized. He wanted to ruin their lives. If we release the names, we’re going to be carrying out Amos’s plan. Even if they’re innocent, they’ll always be associated with this. I don’t see the need.”
“Agree?” Irene said. “Disagree?”
“Agreed,” Phil and Stuart said in unison.
“All right then,” Irene said, rising from her chair. “It stays where it is, with one exception Stuart and I discussed. Dani, would you care to join me?”
Dani accompanied Irene into the conference room, where the DA told the parents that all pending charges against their children had been dropped. Davis Fish barely acknowledged Dani’s presence. He told Irene that Andrew Gansevoort Sr. would be most grateful to hear the news about his son and would show his gratitude the next time Irene was holding a fund-raiser.
“I appreciate that,” she said, handing Fish a letter-sized envelope. “When Logan gets back, tell him he’s been served for obstruction.”
The next day the newspapers talked about “the Preppy Murderer.” Amos Kasden died while trying to escape police custody, according to the official report. Dani read an account in the
New York Star
, under the byline for Vito Cipriano, saying that part of the evidence, a strange occult symbol found on the victim’s body, had to be thrown out of court because of the bungling of young forensic psychiatrist Danielle Harris, who’d been assigned the case after her boss resigned.
“It’s not fair,” Tommy told her, calling her on the telephone the next day after he’d read the article. “It’s my fault. I oughtta lock that fat bucket of lard in the sauna and leave him there until he melts into a puddle of grease and polyester.”
“Let it go,” Dani told Tommy. “As long as it’s me and not the kids they’re looking at, I don’t care.”
“I had a long workout with Liam this morning,” Tommy said. “I told him to take it out on the weights. He’s still pretty freaked out.”
“He should talk to someone,” Dani said. “Or to me, if he wants to. But I’d think it would feel a little weird to have your old babysitter for a therapist.”
“I already suggested Carl,” Tommy said. “Just as a friend. He has a way of saying really smart things and making you think you thought of them yourself. Liam started to cry when we were working out. I told him God gave us tears the same way he gave us laughter. All part of the same system.”
“You’re a good trainer,” Dani said.
“He needs to know he’s got people on his side,” Tommy said. “He also asked me if he could come to church with me on Sunday. I gather his mom and dad don’t see eye to eye on that subject.”
“Claire hasn’t mentioned it to me,” Dani said.
“How about you?” Tommy said. “You busy Sunday morning? I’ll buy you a nice new bonnet to wear.”
“I’ll take a rain check,” Dani said. “I’m flying down to Maryland to talk to those PTSD specialists for first-responders Irene mentioned. I just can’t get to sleep. I keep seeing Amos’s face . . .”
“When will you be back?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “My reservation is for a week. It might not take that long . . . I just don’t know.”
“You can always talk to me,” Tommy said.
“I know I can,” Dani said, realizing that she’d never felt that way about a man before . . . a complete sense of trust, and the knowledge that someone saw her for who she really was. Even when she’d fallen in love with the brilliant chemist in Africa, she’d realized in hindsight that he’d loved talking about himself. She’d loved it too, loved how his mind worked, but he’d never shown as much interest in her as she’d shown in him. It occurred to her that Tommy was someone she could fall in love with, and perhaps she already was, except that falling in love was something she could not possibly think about until she straightened out everything else in her head. One thing at a time.
“I’m counting on it,” she told him. “But right now I think I need somebody totally neutral. Somebody I can start from scratch with and see where it goes.”
“I gotcha,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything while you’re gone. Call me when you get back.”
